> > I can't fix it, and apparently, I can't even fall back on people who should know better (those who compile dictionaries) for help, so why bother?
>
> You're trying to solve it the wrong way. The word "regardless," however correct, has become outmoded by the new, flashier "irregardless." So rather than try to force people back to using the old word and be seen by millions as an old fashioned "stick in the mud" (am I old fashioned for using that phrase?), what you need to do is become a proponent of a new replacement: "disirregardless." It's fun to say, and it adds a third negation, thus reverting the meaning back to what it's supposed to mean.


Well I agree with the two of you. There's no sense trying to stem the tide; it's a thankless and futile task. Why, English has become so corrupted by FOREIGN INFLUENCES that it is a pale shadow of its former germanic glory. Latin was one of the prime corruptors -- it just slunk its way in, dragging prefixes such as "in-" to mean a simple form of negation. For example, due to Latin we have:

infallible = not fallible
inconclusive = not conclusive
inseparable = not separable
invalid = not valid

So far so good, right? That wasn't too bad... It actually seemed to make sense! But then, look what happened next with these newfangled additions:

invaluable = even MORE valuable
inseparable = difficult to conceive of being separable
inflammable = 'flammable' (whoohoo!)
invalid = politically correct term for 'cripple'

Yeah, we have French to blame for the abomination wherein flammable means the same thing as inflammable. No justice at all. To add insult to injury, we then have the gall to wonder why non-native speakers have difficulty learning the rules of English syntax...

So you see, language changes whenever the needs and directions of its speakers change. That means words and phrases take on the meanings that people want them to mean. Yes; the arbitrary nature of some of these transformations has always bothered me. For example, consider the old rhyme "pease porrige hot, pease porrige cold." 400 years ago, a new word was created when people became confused about the analysis of an existing word, 'pease'. It was decided that 'pease' was the plural form for a bunch of peas, for which pea must be the singular, and so the new word - pea - was born. The same thing could happen if folks began to think of the word cheese as referring to more than one chee! Ack!

Sadly, I therefore conclude that it would be an act of utter vanity, for me to try to fight all misuses of word, or erroneous phrases, or other nonsense idiom which enters the fetid imagination of the "popular lexicon". Dictionaries have gone from being the prescriptive arbiters of definition and style, to being mere descriptive chroniclers of the capricious changes in language over the flow of time. There's always that carefree "casualness" to English that it absorbs so many alien conceptual terms with ease. Due to extreme flexibility of linguistic structure, Crazy English continues to grow in leaps and bounds as a global language...

Wolf "but I still can't accept those dumb phrases "My bad" or "it's in the last place you look!" spirit